Last Friday (09/06/23) Cllr Pauline Jorgensen attended a Local Government Association event which brought councillors together from all over the country. It was a great opportunity for to highlight to other councillors, MPs and policy influencers from across Local Government some of the difficulties our Borough faces.
Pauline writes: During the day there was a particularly useful conversation on planning and the top-down housing targets, set by central Government, with Felicity Buchan MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing and Homelessness, and David Simmonds MP Simmonds, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Planning.
Both were very well informed on the issues and difficulties in areas such as Wokingham, and David Simmonds, having also been a councillor before becoming an MP, was aware of the importance of councillors reflecting the views of their residents.
I made the point that the only way to solve the problem of over development and unsustainable housing numbers in places like Wokingham Borough is to increase wealth and employment beyond London and the Southeast. By spreading employment across the country people will no longer be forced to move into the over-heated South East of England for work. Having stood for Parliament in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in 2017, I have seen first-hand how lack of employment can force people to move away from the area they were brought up in.
Wokingham is a desirable place to live, the Borough is less densely populated than our neighbours, with a mix of small towns and semi-rural villages, we also have excellent schools. Understandably people want to live here. Yet, as more homes have been built houses prices seem to have gone up not down.
I was also able to explain to them that our current housing targets are unsustainable and based on a flawed algorithm which pushes more housing to areas which have already met their targets. They clearly took this on board and understood the issue.
Last December the Conservative Government said that targets should be a starting point with new flexibilities to reflect local circumstances. They recognise that what is needed is local homes to meet local housing demand.
Labour have pledged to not only maintain centralised targets but also roll back some green belt protections. The Liberal Democrats, unsurprisingly, point in two opposite directions. Nationally they campaign for more house building and higher targets whilst locally they opposed building up to the point they took control of the Borough council. They have since been very quiet.
The Conservative Group has been clear, we want people today to be able to enjoy the dream of home ownership as previous generations have done and we want to see more affordable homes. We also want to see higher quality homes that are appropriate for the local area. But we want to see an overall reduction in targets for house building and we want sustainable development in the right areas. We are exploring ways of helping people move from rent to buy.
During the previous Conservative administration, we had meetings with the Secretary of State for Local Government, and we also met with Housing Ministers, and our MPs to press the case for cutting Wokingham Borough’s housing numbers. At the same time, we worked with other councils to campaign for a cut in numbers and we were honest with residents about what we could achieve. This strategy worked. We got the Government to slash the Borough’s housing targets in half.
This was a fantastic start but Conservative Group believes housing numbers for Wokingham Borough should be reduced further. I regularly raise this with our local MPs and I am happy to work with other parties to achieve that.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is Leader of the Wokingham Borough Conservatives and represents Hillside ward in Earley.
